Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing revs up for iPhone with OpenFeint

Sonic is about to go social. OpenFeint has announced a partnership with Sega that has integrated the OpenFeint mobile social gaming network into Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing for iOS, which releases this summer. Baking the service into Sonic's next outing on the iPhone will open up the pool of potential racing rivals to over 85 million players. That is, if that many download the game, anyway.

Thanks to OpenFeint, the game will now include social leader boards, achievements and the ability to post those to Facebook and Twitter. Not to mention that, through the service, Sega can inform players directly through the game about upcoming updates and other changes. "Cross platform mobile social gaming is a major goal of SEGA and we believe Sonic will continue to entertain and inspire consumers while on the go," Haruki Satomi, Sega VP of Digital Business, said in a statement.

The partnership is an impressive one regardless, considering OpenFeint was just purchased by GREE, the leading social network in Japan, for reportedly $105 million in April. This shack-up with Sega could lead to more social games from the company on iPhone, and with properties like (sorry, Blue, but that's what you are) Sonic, more Sega mobile games headed for the US, where OpenFeint was born. Sure, we're excited to race Sonic around in our phones, but the idea of a two-fold Japanese social gaming renaissance (DeNA and Ngmoco are preparing a global coup as we speak) is downright "whoa..." worthy.